3/ Queering death beyond the human

Abstract

This is part 3 of 6 of the dossier What do we talk about when we talk about queer death?, edited by M. Petricola. The contributions collected in this article sit at the crossroads between thanatology, critical animal studies, and the posthumanities and tackle questions such as: how can queer death studies deconstruct our perception of non-human deaths? How can we rethink human death from a non-anthropocentric perspective? And how can queer death studies approach the COVID-19 pandemic? The present article includes the following contributions: – Beccaro C. and Tuckett M., The life cycle of the agaonidae wasp: death, queerness, and the shattering of the human; – Langhi R., Corpses are remains: queering human/animal boundaries across death; – Véliz S., Tilting points of reference: how nonhuman death narratives unsettle research; – Varino S., (Un)doing viral time: queer temporalities of living & dying in pandemic times; – Pevere M., Recalcitrant by nature: queering death through biological art practice.

Keywords

• thanatology
• death studies
• queer studies
• animal studies
• posthumanism